Main Junction: SPINNING YARNS -- the Tell Us A Story thread (3rd Oct - 30th Oct)

Memories are all that stand between us and Galvani’s frogs. Here is where we burn our anecdotes onto the face of the Interweb and persuade history we’re more than twitching amphibian meat machines.

THE RULES:

1. Recount a tale on the below topic. You have 300 words. Anything more than that will be flambéed with the righteous heat of Deletion. Repeat offenders will be banned.

Linking to a longer version of the story, or posting subsequent chapters, or anything which indirectly pushes it past that 300 word limit, will be similarly nuked.

2. Read – and comment on – the other entries, before you post your own. Partly that’s because you’ll look like a plum if your story is a rubbish shadow of someone else’s. Mostly it’s because you’re not an impolite shit, are you?

[3. Additional emphasis: “Topic.” TOP-IC. That means your anecdote should revolve around a specific subject, yes? The one below, in fact. Not just any old tale you care to share. Deviation = maggoty pee-hole disaster.]

THE LEGAL CRAP:

By telling us your story, it’s in the public domain. Don’t get pissy about that.

Right now you’re in a pub, surrounded by writers, artists and socialites. If you recount an interesting tale to entertain and endear yourself to your fellows, you do not get to bitch about it if a twisted version of the same tale shows up 30 years later on the other side of the planet. Stories are contagious. My advice? Be honest. Don’t make shit up. Don’t treat this like a fiction thread. It’s a chance to entertain and move us with your life experience. That’s plenty good enough.

There’s this man I used to know. Bit of a prick when he was younger. One night in his late teens, with a few friends, he took a whole bunch of things that aren’t exactly legal, that make one see things somewhat differently, and even see things that aren’t actually there... and after a few adventures involving police cars, sentient ants, a flying Toyota Carina and automatic security lights (which these foolish young men in their altered state thought were UFO landing lights) they made it back to his house. Sometime in the early morning, they went to watch the purple sun come up over the luminous silver fields.

They realised, as four young men wearing leather jackets, that they might not be all that popular with the sheep that were living in the fields. That the sheep might want revenge for their brothers and sisters, murdered to make these vain young male humans look like sexy cool rock stars. And then the sheep all lined up in a military style formation. One sheep stood out from the rest. It was clearly the leader. It was giving them their orders. And then they began to march purposely towards the foolish young men. Who, believing unanimously that they were about to be slaughtered and skinned for jackets by these woolly avengers, ran like absolute hell back to the house. Where every single TV programme they tried to watch, during the rest of that terrifying early morning, featured sheep. On every single channel. That night, that young man fought the sheep, and the sheep won.

Horses are funny animals - they tend to be afraid of almost anything. I purchased a giant yoga ball for my horses to play with, and proceeded to throw it into the pasture. Three of my four horses were scared shitless. Picture a 1200 pound animal literally shivering in fear. Eyes rolled into the back of its head, whites showing, visibly trembling, and pressed into a corner so hard that the fence is bending. Thinking I had made a mistake, and wondering what to do with this stupid ball, I kicked it across the fence toward Beau, my big, grumpy, testosterone-filled horse. He loved it.

So here I am, playing pass with a horse that normally wants nothing but to bite your face off. My boyfriend, knowing that I love this horse more than any of the others (despite its habit of attempting to remove my limbs), decides that he might be able to participate. Most men have to bond with fathers and brothers. Mine has to bond with a giant, grumpy horse. Seeing that Beau seems to be happy for the time being, I pass the ball to my boyfriend. He kicks it to Beau. The horse looks at the ball by his feet, looks back to me, sighs, and stands still for a moment. He then looks back and forth between the ball and the boy for a while, looking like he was just greatly insulted. He proceeds to pass the ball to me, and walk away. I think that maybe the boyfriend has given up on any "bonding" with that horse.

Early nineties, I was a young teenager; my girlfriend had got permission for me to accompany her on a babysitting job. Obviously her parents had vouched that I was a nice boy and wouldn't raid the booze cabinet. I was looking forward to an evening of heavy snogging and maybe, if lucky, some under the jumper joy!We arrived, the children were already asleep and while I was doing my best polite young man impression, in came the families' young labrador bitch.Less than a year old, she was excitable in that dumb lab way and I immediately began playing with her while telling them of my own family labrador who was quite old then.So away went the parents and I played with the dog while my girl fixed snacks and then we settled down to watch a movie and get down to the aforementioned snogging. All was good.

An hour later I got up to take a pee and the dog, who had been lying quietly in the room, freaked. Barking and growling as I moved towards her, she bolted into the kitchen where I found her crouched and shivering under the table in a puddle of piss! I had no idea what had happened. I hadn't raised my voice or even moved suddenly but the dog was now completely terrified of me and no amount of coaxing from me or my girlfriend could alter its quivering state.

Trying to explain this to the parents when they returned, with the dog twitching at my every move, was not easy. I guess I will forever be in their minds the strange boy who did unspeakable things to their dog. I wasn't invited to go babysitting again.

Back when i lived in Newcastle in the north of England..round about 1986..there was a bakers shop in the west end.Right at the top of a massive hill-road.It was a pretty rough area.Real bust up old houses and urban wasteland.This particular shop used to sell yesterdays bread,pasties,doughnuts etc at a super cheap rate.Every morning there was a massive line of poor folk taking it in turn to get some scran.I lived on the other side of the town on the docks.Right next to the ITV studios on a mad estate called Battlefield!I was a student at the time and liked to use the little money i had to get pissed so used to go there often.I was hung-over and starving one cold morning so made the long..long..trek there and anxiously got a bag of pretty dodgy dough stuff to eat.I decided to make the journey back home and made a slight detour down a back lane.I believe i could hear a strange sort of growling noise yet thought nowt of it..Suddenly this massive beast of an alsatian..honest,it looked like a mad wolf with serial killer intent,..the bastard jumps to attack me looking at me food.I freaked out and slung the bag right at it.The nasty git started to eat it,giving me the evil eye all the time.So hungry was I that i tried to retrieve the scran a few times but it just looked at me mental and barked and growled.Eventually i just gave up and left with the hump major style.It was awful!Hideous!

I've got a pasty in me fridge as i tap..it's now going to be a challenge to eat it!Fooksake...

When I was a small child, my cat Oreo died (was found dead frozen to our neighbors lawn) on Thanksgiving morning.

So I got to pick our next cat. Alley cat tom, part Maine Coon. I named him Snickers. I was about three or four years old.

Flash forward maybe a year or so... I had just recently started reading on my own, thanks to an awesome mom. And my Aunt had just gotten divorced and moved into our upstairs bedroom.

Since my cat and reading were two of my favorite things, I grabbed a book in one hand and scooped up the cat in the other and started up the stairs. I was carrying the cat with one arm, the way kids do, where you have your arm around the cat under his front paws and he just hangs there hating you. He was somewhat struggling not wanting whatever it was that I wanted.

So I get to the top step and the cat had just about managed to escape my grasp and he climbed up out of my arm, and jumped away from me, pushing off the center of my chest with his back feet. I was fairly young, like I said, 4 or 5, and I had my hands full of book and cat so I wasn't holding onto a handrail, and was too young to have this stairs thing down yet, and the cat had just enough force to tip me over backwards. I rolled down the stairs backwards, screaming.

I guess at this point, Snickers was at full-on freak-the-fuck-out mode, and was running down the stairs at the same time, and was also perceiving me as a threat. Because by the time I landed at the bottom of the stairs, Snickers jumped on my head and latched onto me with his claws. I was running around the hallway with this cat on my head, and I'm screaming.

Nobody came to see what was the matter. Later when I tried explaining it, everyone assumed I was exaggerating.

That cat lived for another 14 years, and tortured me constantly. God, I miss that cat.

I'd been in Yellowstone for about 7 days for the exciting part of my gap year; I'd been having the time of my life up until that point, except for the buffalo deciding to give me hell.

It starts when I wake up one morning to hear a low grumbling sound - I hadn't seen any bears up until that point, but I was more than willing to believe that one had found my campsite and was waiting just outside my tent ready to eat me up if I so much as peaked out. So bear spray in hand I opened the flap to see...a herd of buffalo crossing the river near the campsite.

The next day I woke up without any natural alarm clock, and was bringing my bag down when I hear a sound behind me and turn around to see a buffalo a little under 5 metres away. I swear I jumped back at least a foot, with no idea what to do except watch it as it decided that today was not the day it would explore what it's like to be a carnivore, and turn away.

I set off, making for the next campsite; I have to be honest I didn't exactly follow the tracks completely, so at one point I decided to cut across the side of a hill, right into another buffalo.

It charged of course, and with around 15 kilos on my back I've never moved so fast in my life, before it swerved away...and charged again. I made it down the hill, around the other buffalo which I'd almost run into in my attempt to get away from the first and back to civilisation, where I ate the biggest burger I could find.

The girlfriend of one of my college friends had this cat, that looked like every villain's white, long-haired cat and had the disposition that was one part irritating mother-in-law, one part abusive spouse, and three parts very angry demon.

This cat, if you pissed it off, which was easy to do, would stalk you around the house and attempt to make mince of your ankles.

I hated that cat and that cat hated me right back.

Now, the cat's litterbox was kept in the guest bathroom in a cupboard whose door was usually left open. Which made for a horrible experience when you're on the toilet, doing your business, and the cat pops out of the cupboard all teeth and claws and "HEREEEEEEE'S KITTY!". The crap thing about the situation was that the door to the cupboard opened toward the toilet, so you didn't know if that shitty cat was doing its business until you were trying to do yours and wondering why your legs were quickly being skeletonized by a white-turning-pink blur of hate.

So one day I'm over at their place and go in to use the bathroom. I'm on the toilet and I look into the cupboard and that cat is looking at me, only I caught it in the middle of it doing its thing. The cat, looking pissed as usual, started to look a little bit more pissed at me until its angry hissing turned to slightly panicked hissing as I closed the cupboard door with my foot. There was no latch so it was able to get out as soon as I stopped holding the door closed but the look on its face as the light slowly grew dim as the door closed was sweet revenge for some of the scars I still have.

@Alan - as a big time arachnophobe - that is a true horror story. I've had to fight my way out of spidery facegrabs and still have nightmares that, when I wake, leave me crying and dry heaving. There was also the time I don't actually remember screaming and running to the other end of the restaurant because a spider came down from the ceiling over the table. Boyfriend-at-the-time tried to call me Miss Muffet once or twice but I was too freaked for it to take.

Now I don't know about spiders but I know cats don't hate me. The looooovve me. Every time I've been to someone's home with a shy cat I'm promised I won't see it because it's so scared of strangers. But inevitably the creature comes out and, one way or another, finds its way to my lap. Of course, I can't help but give in to my little girl impulse because inside there's a voice that cooing "cuuute kitty is cuuuuuuute!!" and what can I do but scratch and pet the kitty, eh?

See here's the thing. I'm very allergic to cats. Horribly. One cat and I'm sneezing and scratching and can't drink enough water, two cats and my eyes and nose won't stop running, my chest feels compressed, three cats and I start to sound like Darth Vader while trying to breathe. More than that and I really can't be in the room out of serious fear for my health.

@Jamie & Ren: Oh man, please laugh. It'll make up for me screaming like a kettle that someone forgot to take off the burner.

@Razrangel: I have the worst dream about a spider. It's the size of a wolf, and I'm just running and slamming barriers between it and myself, but it always squeezes through with this horrible, oh-so-arachnid squishy grace. Also, on the the topic of cats, here's the thing about them: they ALWAYS gravitate toward non-cat people. They avoid cat people like the plague until about six weeks. Couldn't tell ya why.

Alright, I got one more. So, my dad and grampa used to go hunting all the time, and on one of their adventures they bagged themselves this pretty good-sized elk. They didn't get the head stuffed, but they did have the antlers mounted, and my dad took it home and hung it on his office wall. Well, the years went by, and I sort of colonized one corner of the office as my writing area, and naturally that corner was right under the elk antlers. At the time I thought it was cool - I felt like Jack from The Shining sitting in his room at the Overlook Hotel, which was very appropriate as, at 15, I'd just started reading Stephen King and decided that he as my hero.

One night, I'm writing in the middle of a real good, howling Iowa thunderstorm. As it happened, I was writing what was probably my first real attempt at a scary scene, and I guess it was working, because I was sweating so bad I had to take my shirt off, and my eyes kept darting around the room whenever a lightning strike hit. I was scaring myself silly, but having a blast while I did it, too.

Well anyway, those antlers were apparently in need of a re-mounting, because what happened was, a particularly loud thunderclap hit, and the whole house vibrated. This shook the screws that were set into the wall loose, and the antlers come crashing down RIGHT at my feet. I didn't even have the presence of mind to see what it was, all I knew was some antlered monster had come OUT OF THE WALL, and that I needed to RUN and RUN NOW.

I got halfway up the second flight of stairs to my room before my brain put together what must have happened. Even so, I'm lucky the antlers didn't come down on my head.

I'm from Australia, so you know it's going to be a tale of evil creepy-crawlies.

So, back in 1995 I'd just bought a hundred acres of land way out in the country, figuring I'd use it as a vacation spot. It had a small dam, a creek at the rear, and a weatherproof shed which I planned to use as a cabin. First night, I wake from a dream about someone hacking off my toe with a steak knife, and find my right foot is all painful and throbbing. I grab a torch, shine it around and find an eight-inch centipede scurrying down a crack. Centipede bites are painful but not life threatening, so I cuss the thing out, spray insecticide down the crack and climb back into bed.

Next morning I'm shopping in town and thinking it might be a good idea to purchase some more insecticide and give the cabin a good spray before spending another night in there, so I stock up with half a dozen cans of Raid. My dad and I spend about ten minutes carefully spraying along all the edges and corners of the shed, and up under the side joists where the metal walls are anchored to the building's frame. Nothing happens for a few minutes, then black widow spiders start dropping out of the sides of the shed and writhing spastically on the floor.

My maternal grandparents live next door to what I can really only accurately describe as a SWARM of giant corgis. I mean, technically I suppose they live next door to corgi-owners, or at least corgi-keepers - corgi-wranglers? Regardless, all I've seen of the actual neighbours is suspicious-glared porch-sitting, whereas the dogs line up to bark madly at me every time I walk past their fence - regardless of how loud I am being and whether I am carrying food. They'll be lolling about all over this run-down yard, and the minute I set foot on the pavement beside their fence they will each heave their bulky orange bodies off the ground and form up, hut hut hut, all in a row to yell at me, hut hut hut.

I'm not kidding about their size, these little dudes are taller than my knees and pretty damn broad-shouldered for royal foot-warmers. I am pretty sure they could take me down if they weren't too waddly to get over the fence. And the wranglers don't repair, as a rule, by the vaguely Mad Max look of their yard, so it's only a matter of time...

Oh, and there was the time I was standing in the shower when I noticed the water felt a bit funny on my leg, looked down and discovered a somewhat soggy funnelweb spider scrambling up my thigh. The fucking Flash would've scrambled to keep up with the reflexive swipe I performed while brushing the deadly spider away from my junk.

(A funnelweb spider has enough venom to kill about fourteen healthy adults, and looks like this - )